Project Log

week2 

Friday October 6th

Katelyn and I met this morning and discussed life as well as our schedules and plans for the garden of course. We will meet again at the Long house to create a map of what the space looks like now and what we hope it to look like after we put our energy into it. We want to include a plan for a designated trail, which plants will be removed, which plants will be added and where, and some other gardening tasks (such as de-weeding). We also plan on getting to know all of the plants in our garden space which includes learning their names, uses, and favorite places to be/grow.

Time: 1 hr 45 min 
week 3 
Friday October 13th
Met this morning for one hour to do plant identification in our area. We identified a lot of coltsfoot, sword fern, bracken fern, and rushes. There was a lot of sad looking salmonberry, as well as the blooming orange touch-me-nots, nootka rose, skunk cabbage, thimbleberry, horsetail, pacific willow, redcedar, big-leaf maple, cascara. There was also a noticeable amount of dead red elderberry that looked like it needed to be removed. We duscussed plans to identify some of the mosses in our area as well. We will return to the site this weekend with our neighboring site partners and decide where the boundaries are so that we may design a map of plants within our area.
Time: 1 hr 
week 4
Wednesday October 18th
Spent time in the garden identifying plants and getting to know them better with Moore's Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West. I specifically enjoyed reading about the plants' medicinal uses while I was physically at the site and able to connect with the plant. 
Time: 2 hours 
Saturday October 21th
Studied the overall layout of our garden and wrote up a site description and map. We included the dominating plants along the perimeters of the garden as well as some of the other plants that seemed to stand out throughout the rest of the garden.
Time: 2 hours
Sunday October 22nd
Visited Merilee Peterson's garden and began to prepare her garden for winter. We spent time going over the goals that she has set out for us, which includes de-weeding, pruning and cutting plants back, spreading laying down cardboard throughout the garden and spreading nutrient-rich soil over it (fish & chips as Merilee calls it). We succeeded in spreading the soil over most of her garden on Sunday and started pulling out weeds. 
Time: 7 hours
 
Week 5 
Wednesday October 25th
Studied plants in the garden and identified the soil type and rough slope of the area. 
Time: 1 hour
 Sunday October 29th
Spent time at Merilee's garden spreading more mulch ("fish 'n' chips") throughout the garden and pulling out lots and lots of weeds. We found that there were massive amounts of little grass roots and other unwanted weeds mixed in with the mulch. We think that this has something to do with the process in which they made the mulch. We spent a few hours de-weeding the garden and then had to constantly pull out weeds from the fish 'n' chip mixture as we were spreading it on the ground. This was very time consuming and a bit frustrating. I understand that the purpose of spreading mulch throughout the garden is to keep out the weeds and here we are spreading a bunch of mulch that is completely covered in more weeds! The other main activity for the day was pulling out the dahlia tubers so that they can be planted again next spring. We separated the tubers and placed them in paper bags mixed in with fresh wood shavings. Merilee had tons of dahlias all over the garden so this took quite a bit of time. They were also in different colors (red, white and pink mostly) so we had to write on the tubers what color they are. I learned a lot about dahlia's this afternoon that's for sure! 
Time: 3 hours
Week 6 
Thursday November 2nd
Katelyn and I researched many of the plants in our habitat using online resources as well as a variety of books that I had on my shelf. We used Hildegard's Healing Plants (more for fun), James Greene, Michael Moore, Pojar and Mackinnon, Healing Secrets of the Native Americans and Stalking the Wild Asparigus (my farvorite Euell Gibbons book). We made a fair amount of progress in finding what the plants in our site are about.
Time: 2 hours
Week 7
Thursday November 9th
Katelyn and I met in the library to compose our presentation pages and reasearch our habitat. We also went to the longhouse and collected plants to press and scan onto our webpage. 
Time: 3 hours
Week 8
Tuesday November 14th
Katelyn and I went on a search for a devil's club and maidenhair fern procurement site.  We went down the old Evergreen beach trail knowing that here was a giant patch of devil's club along the way, but found that they are not there any more.  This really confused me because there is a spot under a tree where I used to always sit and admire the devil's club (it's my favorite plant).  So since I was last there it has disappeared...hmmm...So, then we went up and down a few other trails on the Evergreen campus but did not manage to find any!  I am a aware of other places where they grow off campus, but will need to look further into that because I'm not sure about going on to private property.  If the sites even are private property.  Either way it was a fun idea for me because I would like also make medicine out of a little bit of the root and also make tea out of the maidenhair leaves.  (I am not sure if now is the best time for the leaves but I thought I'd try).  It is great mixed with chamomile yarrow for a hair wash and the tea helps with promoting and stimulating menses (especially usefull for those coming off the birth control pills).
Time: 2 hours 
Saturday November 18th
Took lots of photos of the plants and setting of our site.  Following that, I looked for other plants that I knew could potentially thrive on our site but currently are not there.  I hiked around campus, in the woods by my house and down a beach trail off of Brenner road near campus.  I found and took pictures of the following plants for possible transplanting to our site: Urtical dioica, cornus toloniera, angelica genuflexa, oplopanax horridum and symphoricarpos albus.  I'm not sure that the last one would survive right next to the creek but possibly in the same area.  
Time: 2.5 hours
Week 9
Wednesday November 22nd
Deveoloped photos from Saturday and spent some time figuring out which plants were which from the photos.  I prepared the layout and order for which to scan them into the computer to add to our presentation along with captions for the photos.  I found it easier to organize it this way and I realized how much easier it is to hand write botanical information instead of typing it directly into the computer.  It's helpful when trying not to plagiarise and when using so many different sources for information.  I also found that I ended up memorizing a ton of information by writing it first and then typing it up.
Time: 4 hours
Week 10
Wednesday November 29th
Completed the scanning in of images from our site onto drupal as well as the rest of the work for our site presentation.  It took an enormous amount of time for me to edit the images into Drupal but once I got that done the rest of the work for the presentation was not quite as tedious.  I spent a lot of time thinking about our accomplishments and goals and felt that I was able to fill in that feild very honestly and thoughtfully. 
Time: 4.25 hours
Cumulative time: 35 hours and 40 minutes  
Ingrid Abbott
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